


Just a messenger

by Howling_Harpy



Series: Eyes of the beholder [5]
Category: Band of Brothers (TV 2001)
Genre: Canon Era, Dear John Letter, Drabble, Gen, Implied Relationships, Letters, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-17 09:28:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29098035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Howling_Harpy/pseuds/Howling_Harpy
Summary: Delivering mail gives Allen Vest a unique perspective on many things.
Series: Eyes of the beholder [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1890967
Kudos: 12





	Just a messenger

**Author's Note:**

> I'm slowly working on the remaining outsider pov fics I haven't posted here yet. This one is about Vest and all the drama he politely ignores.

Allen Vest learned quickly that lingering by with the mail was a bad idea. Mail could be a wonderful thing, and it wasn’t like Vest read any of what wasn’t addressed to him, but he had figured out fast that not everyone’s mother wrote about the comings and goings of home twice a month with her sweet regards.

Back at Toccoa Vest hated a certain someone of the officer roster along with everyone else, and during evening hours joined in the chorus of venting about this and that stupid and over the top training exercise. Vest laughed along with the others, but also lived with the quiet knowledge that he delivered Sobel his mail. Every week he received a large, brown envelope thick like a catechism with the sender’s address in Chicago. Sobel always looked at those letters with a mixture of pain and resolution, and Vest couldn’t help but feel bad for the man.

At first Vest had been cheered up when he received and delivered letters from girls. It was easy to tell from the cute envelopes and beautiful cursive handwriting, and it was always endearing when the hometown girls wrote to their fellas, and funny when several girls wrote to the same fella. Sometimes Vest carried Sergeant Talbert an entire stack of pretty, scented letters and suffered the cocky smirk from a guy who got too much of a good thing. 

But that too had its flipside that Vest learned to remove himself from.

Naturally he never noticed when an individual girl stopped writing, but the fella in question sure did. They would rush to Vest’s office and demand to know about their Mary, Betty, or Debbie, and every time it was just as awkward to pretend to look and then return to tell him that there was nothing.

Sometimes he delivered the last letter to come. Once in England he took a letter to one of their replacements, and just when Vest was about to follow his own protocol and leave, Bill Guarnere struck up a conversation with him. Next to them, the replacement called Heffron tore his letter open and began to read, clearly excited.

Vest and Guarnere chatted away about gambling, then gambling on gambling, when they were interrupted by a broken-hearted cry that made them both jump. 

They turned to see Heffron with his face scrunched up, head bowed low and his arms hanging limply at his sides with the letter drooping in one hand.

“Babe?” Guarnere tried carefully.

“It’s… It’s Doris,” Heffron explained, sniffling. “She’s… There’s… someone else. She’s not gonna wait after all.”

“Oh, shit… Oh, no,” Guarnere said through his grimace, inching closer to his new buddy. 

“She promised!” Heffron cried out and lifted the letter to read it again as if hoping he had somehow misunderstood the content. “She promised…” he repeated brokenly. 

“Oh, Babe. C’mere, buddy,” Guarnere sighed and caught Heffron into a hug, letting him rest his head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, buddy. It just wasn’t meant to be, ya know? But maybe that’s good because she’s a fickle liar and you really dodged a bullet there. You deserve better, Babe.”

He swayed them slowly from side to side when Heffron started to cry, and Vest made himself scarce.

By Germany Vest had learned to never let anyone read their letters at his office, to never question anyone of the package they were sending, to run supplies off the books through the post office, and to hoard stamps for himself.

He wondered if the discretion he had learned would come on handy in whatever job he’d get back at the States, but he hoped so. He had learned to keep his mouth shut about so many things, such as fellas sending letters to several girls at the same time, packages full of loot, packages with condoms or penicillin for intimate use (sometimes both in the same delivery), and unpleasant legal documents that needed to be signed and sent back.

He never made a peep about their C.O. switching the mailing address of his loot from England to a small town in West Virginia, and he never talked back at Major Winters who showed up at his office sometimes several times in one day to ask for a letter from the States clearly never thinking himself as obviously lovesick as dozens of other fools. 

Vest didn’t comment. He just delivered the mail.


End file.
